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John Dennison
John Sebastian Dennison (born 28 May 1978) is a New Zealand poet and literary critic. Life Dennison attended the University of Otago, where he earned a B.A. in 2003 and a Bachelor of Theology in 2005.John Dennison, University of St. Andrews. Web, Mar. 21, 2014. Dennison became a well-known poetry performer in Dunedin, New Zealand, during his time there in 2003-2007. He performed his distinct yet Baxteresque performance poetry at all of the local poetry performance venues: the Arc Café, the Port Chalmers Hotel (The Tunnel), and the Dunedin Public Library. While preferring the orality of performance, he published a few poems in student magazine The Critic. In April 2007, Dennison was awarded the highest value scholarship from the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission. The scholarships awarded by the New Zealand Government were embroiled in controversy, when Opposition MPs criticised the award of $96,000 for the study of bogans. Dennison's scholarship was awarded to fund his doctoral research at St Andrews University, Scotland. Dennison's research is for the purpose of considering Seamus Heaney's poetry and its social implications, looking at the ways in which Heaney’s poetry addresses political conflict in Northern Ireland. He teaches and works as a chaplain at Victoria University of Wellington.John Dennison, PN Review. Web, Mar. 22, 2014. Writing Poetry His poems frequently interlace the gravity of biblical imagery with the banalities of modern existence, forcing their confrontation and overcoming any simple binary interpretations. This is evident in his poems "Retail Therapy" and "Fool’s Repair." Criticism Dennison has published on the poetry of New Zealand poet James K. Baxter, "Ko te Pakeha te teina: Baxter's cross-cultural poetry". Dennison explores "the potential of Baxter's engagement to inform a radical understanding of Pakeha identity" (the theme of Dennison's M.A. dissertation. Dennison seeks to overcome the interpretation of Baxter's engagement with te ao Māori in terms of a simplistic dichotomy between Māori and Pākehā; spiritual and rational; pre-modern and modern. In Baxter's later poetry, Dennison finds that Baxter's use of te ao Māori is not for the purposes of setting up an opposition to Pākehā culture, nor is it a simple model for Pākehā culture to emulate, but it functions to inspire a rethinking of what it is to be Pākehā. Instead of being defined by opposition or assimilation, Dennison's thesis is that Baxter was suggesting a reconfiguration of Pākehā identity, shaped by the tuakana-teina (elder brother-younger brother) familial relationship. Publications Poetry *''Otherwise''. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 2015.Search results = au:John Dennison, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Sep. 15, 2015. Non-fiction *'Ko te Pakeha te teina: Baxter's cross-cultural poetry', Journal of New Zealand Literature, 23: 2 (2005), pp. 36-46. *'A safe place? Pakeha identity and Christianity', Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, 10.2 (2002), pp. 36-7. *'Truth That is Shared: James K. Baxter's cross-cultural metaphors and Pakeha identity', Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice, 11.1 (2003), pp. 42-47. Also presented as a paper at the Canterbury-Otago Postgraduate Conference, University of Canterbury, October 2002.. See also *List of New Zealand poets References External links ;Poems *Three poems: John Dennison at PN Review *Poem of the Week: "Psalm" at The Guardian ;Prose *"Writings in memory of Seamus Heaney" at Contrapasso magazine ;Books *''Otherwise'' at Amazon.com Category:New Zealand poets Category:1978 births Category:Living people Category:University of Victoria alumni Category:21st-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Performance poets